The Tulip Driven Life Podcast

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Last week I spoke about the message of redemption from our
sins through the blood of Jesus. In last week’s blog, I spoke as openly as I
could about the Gospel and the way that it changes lives. I spoke of Jesus’
persecution and pain for the forgiveness of our sins. This week, the topic
remains Jesus, but it turns to His superiority. It is true that He shed his
blood, but what makes His blood so worthy to be shed on our behalf? What makes
Him so different that the entire crux of the Christian faith rests squarely on
His shoulders? What makes Jesus the one that delivered us? Paul turns to
answering these questions in Colossians 1:15-20, and it is there that we will
focus our attention

Christ is God

Colossians 1:15 says this: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all
creation.” Look at the first part of that verse. In the first clause of
this verse, Paul makes the argument that God could be seen in the fleshly body
of Jesus. God Himself became incarnate, and dwelled among us as a human being
through the man of Jesus Christ. Jesus is God, and it is there that He gains
His superiority to die for us. Now, we
must also be careful here as we dissect this verse. It is easy to conclude by
looking at the end of this verse that Christ is the first creation. This is not
only wrong, but extremely heretical and dangerous. Christ was not created, but
has always been (after all, He is God).
We can easily refute that train of thinking. First of all, the Bible
outside of this verse doesn’t lead us to any assumption that Jesus was created.
And if the whole of the Bible claims Jesus to be God, then one verse shouldn’t
easily persuade that He is not. Secondly, Paul’s mentioning of Him as the
“firstborn over creation” is not a question of His origin, but rather an
assertion of His position. He is the King of all creation, not because He was
created first, but because He created everything. If Jesus is God, and Jesus
created everything, then we can see that the shedding of His blood is
sufficient for the covering of our sins.

Christ Controls
Everything

Piggybacking off of his earlier assertion that Jesus was the
creator of the world, Paul leaves no doubt in verses 16-17 when he says this: “For by Him (Jesus) all things were
created that are in Heaven and that are on earth, visible, and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things
were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and
in Him all things consist.” Paul makes it very clear in this verse
that Christ is not only the creator of all natural things, but He dictates the
course of all of human history. Also take note of how many times Paul says the
word “all” in these two verses (four times!). Paul makes his point very clear:
Jesus is Lord and master over every single thing in this world. According to my
professor here at Liberty the word all can be defined as this: “all means all
and that’s all all means.” It sounds like a ridiculous definition, but the point
definitely gets across. Christ controls all things, and there is not a single
thing that has happened in this world that He did not allow to happen. Christ
is in complete control, and in there we have another glimpse of how worthy He
is to have taken our sins upon His shoulders.

Christ is the Head
of the Church

Paul persists on claiming Christ’s superiority as He turns
to verse 18 of Colossians 1. Take a look at it as it says this: “And He (Christ) is the head of the church,
who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may
have preeminence.” Here I face a very sobering (yet exciting) truth as I
pursue ministry in the local church: the church belongs to Jesus. He is the
very foundation of the church, the very core of what we believe. He controls
the church and owns the church, because He died for the church. He died, but He
resurrected (“firstborn from the dead”), and in that He has authority over all
things that the church does. May we be motivated by our head, our leader, our Savior!
May we remember that He is the king of all things, and we are just mere tools
in His grand plan. Because God incarnate, controller of the universe, came to
die and to rise again, we are able to say that His blood was the only blood
that could have ever been shed on our behalf.

Coming Full Circle

Read Colossians 1:19-20 and you will see that the qualities
of Christ that I listed above have enormous ramifications on why it was only He
that could shed His blood to redeem us. It says this in those two verses: “For it pleased the Father that in Him all
the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself,
whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the
blood of His cross.” Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! Because we have seen that
Jesus is God, because we have seen that He is creator of all things and holds
all things together, because we have seen that He is the one who controls all
the course of human history, and because we have seen that He is the head of
the church due to His power over death, now we can see that only His blood was
sufficient to make peace on our behalf. He alone is worthy of the honor and
glory for that death and that resurrection. Only God Himself could have come to
this earth and pulled that off. What a redeemer we have! He is so powerful, so
wonderful, and yet, so intimate with His children. That’s why I love my Jesus.

The
author of the letter to the Hebrews is unknown. The writer does not identify
himself, and the clues are sufficiently weak as to make it impossible to offer
a suggestion with any certainty. The Scofield
Reference Bible ascribes the letter to Paul. Most all other such Bibles refrain.
It is very unlikely that Paul was the author. The writer places himself among
those who had not received any direct revelation from Christ, but heard only
those who had (Heb 2:3). Paul insists that he had received his Gospel from
Christ himself (Gal 1:11, 12; Cf Eph 1:3).

The
occasion of the letter is an apparent danger of some Jewish converts to turn
back to the Old Testament system of worship in some fashion. The temptation to succumb
is easier because the temple and priestly offices were still in tact, as the
letter seems to indicate (Heb 5:1; 8:13; 10:1-3, 11). If the temple had been
destroyed, as it was in 70 AD, its significance would have disappeared.

Because
of this danger, the author’s purpose is to persuade his readers not to leave
their confidence in Christ and turn back. Hence, his theme is the superiority
of Christ over anything that had previously come in redemptive history: OT
prophets (1:1,2), angels (1:4ff), Moses (3:2-6), the High Priest (4:14-5:10;
6:20; 7:26ff; 8:1, 2; et. al.), Abraham (7:1-7), the Levitical priesthood
(7:11-25; 8:3-6); the Old Covenant sacrifice (8:7-13; 10:1-18).

Hebrews
6:4-6 underscores the danger. Although the interpretation of this text is
problematic, however it is interpreted, we may discern a stern warning. For those
who have been so enlightened, as his Jewish audience has, but after careful
consideration turn back to the old ways, there is no more sacrifice. The
implication is that such persons will fall away and cannot be restored for they
will not come to repentance. Their hardhearted disdain of the enlightenment of
the Holy Spirit and the word of God is akin to the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit
(Matt 12:31) wherein there is no forgiveness.

But
the writer is persuaded of better things of his readers, that they are not
going to apostatize but rather continue on in the way of salvation (Heb 6:9).
It is with this confidence that the author addresses his readers as holy
brothers and partakers
of the heavenly calling.

Our
calling is a heavenly calling because it is a calling whose origin is not of
this world. From Paul we learn that all of humanity by nature comes under the
dominion of the prince and power of the air (Eph 2:2). John speaks of the whole
world lying in the power of the wicked one (1 John 4:19). There is nothing in
this world that can produce a calling like the heavenly calling. It is a
calling that comes through the work of his Spirit within us (John 3: 3, 5).

It
is a heavenly calling because those called have been blessed with every
spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, that is, in Christ who is now in
heaven at the right hand of God (Eph 1:3) interceding for us (Rom 8:34). Our
union with Christ in his death and resurrection (Rom 6:5) places us in the
heavenlies with him even now (Eph 2:5, 6) though to the human eye and in our
mundane experience it does not appear to be so and will not until we see Jesus
when he comes again (1 John 3:1, 2; Col 3:3, 4).

It
is a heavenly calling because it is a rescuing from this present evil world
(Gal 1:4) into a new creation (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15) which has not yet been
fully realized, but will be when Christ returns to recreate the world (2 Pet
3:10) and establish the heavenly tabernacle of God among men in the new heavens
and earth (Rev 21:1-3) where God and man will co-dwell once again as they had
done at the beginning (Gen 3:8, 9).

It
is a heavenly calling because it persuades us to set our affection on the holy
things above, not on the wicked things of this world (Col 3:1-5). It imparts to us wisdom from
above that is pure,
peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without
partiality and without hypocrisy (James 3:17).

It
is a heavenly calling because the Savior who calls us as sheep by name (John
10:3) came down out of heaven (John 3:13; 6:38) as the Bread of Heaven (John
6:31-33, 50, 51) who gives us heavenly life.

Because
our calling is heavenly we are assured that nothing here below can alter its
sure outcome as Paul wrote, I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities
nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor
any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38, 39).

Our
heavenly calling assures us that God can do a great work in us with the same
power that he used to raise Christ from the dead and seat him (and us) in the
heavenly places (Eph 1:19, 20) where we are untouched by the principalities,
mights, powers, and dominions of spiritual forces (Eph 1:21).

With
such a heavenly calling, who can be discouraged? There is hope now and for the
end. It is when we forget our heavenly calling that the difficulties and trials
of this world become too great for us. We are drained of assurance and tend to
despair as those who have no hope.

Seeing
then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus
the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.... without wavering, for He
who promised is faithful
(Heb 4:14; 10:23).